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SUPERHERO.
WANTED.
Must be good with numbers
VIRTUAL FD (CloudCFO)
ABOUT CREATE
What We Do
We believe that awesome, thriving, independent small businesses have the power to create better lives, better communities, a better society and a better planet.
Our purpose is to support small business owners by enabling them to create a business that delivers them more cash, more free time, and more enjoyment. Which together we call ‘more life’.
We’re an accountancy business, whose mission is to be way more than ‘just accountants’. We want to partner with small business owners, and be their ‘CloudCFO’.
‘Wtf is a CloudCFO!?’... A new breed of accountant built for the 2020s.
Imagine having a virtual Finance Director or ‘co-pilot’ for your small business, who’s alongside you for every step of the journey. Someone who can bring together their top-notch skills with numbers, add a structured approach to running & growing your business, and look after your entire financial world….
That’s what we do.
And we believe that every small business owner should have the opportunity to work with an accountant that can deliver that service.
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How we work
We are a digital accountancy business, born in the cloud, and living in the future.
By leveraging technology, offshoring and agility - we can deliver amazing value to our clients by delivering the benefits you’d get from an in-house Finance Director, but at a much lower cost.
Our company is designed & built to run virtually, with no physical offices, and no set working hours.
Our team can do most of our work from anywhere in the world that has access to electricity and an internet connection, and currently spans the UK, the Philippines, and India.
ABOUT THE.
OPPORTUNITY.
The Role
We want to offer you the opportunity to work for our small-but-awesome company as our new Client Virtual FD, or as we call it “CloudCFO”.
Your main area of responsibility will be looking after a group of our clients - and be responsible for helping them achieve their personal ambitions through their businesses.
Whether that’s increasing the amount of cash they earn, reducing the hours they need to spend at work, or removing the stress of financial admin - you will be using your super-powers with numbers, people and technology to guide them on their journey to enjoying ‘more life’.
You’ll be a superhero in their eyes, because you’ll be making a profound difference to their quality of life, giving you oodles of job satisfaction and a clear purpose in your professional life,
You will ultimately be using your knowledge and skills to do immense good for your community, wider society, and the planet - by helping local independent small businesses to thrive.
The Team
You’ll be the human interface between our clients and our back-of-house operations team. They’re the ones who will be supporting you with a full-stack support function to do all the heavy-lifting, and provide you with accurate real-time data, valuable insights, and quality reports on our client’s financial wellbeing.
Think of them as being your in-house finance team - comprising a Financial Controller, Bookkeeper, and payroll bureau. All trained-up and on hand to help make your job, and your life, a breeze.
The Training
Training will be given in how to leverage the technology that is currently disrupting the profession, enabling us to deliver huge amounts of value to our clients without tons of legwork.
You’ll be given the opportunity to exercise your soft skills in listening, communication, and empathy - as well as your core technical abilities - to get the job done in the most effective way.
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We’ll also upskill you in coaching and selling - which will be super-transferable to pretty much any future role that you choose to move on to, and for to many other facets of life in general.
The Growth
You’ll be our second UK-based hire, and will be taking over the client-management-reins for a crop of clients ffrom our CEO Rich. This is a relatively-newly-created role, where we’ll need your help refine the systems and processes as we get up to speed.
We believe in continuous evolution and improvement. Your role will be adapting and evolving as you progress, so we can be pretty certain that you won’t get bored doing the same old stuff every week!
You’ll be given the freedom to bring your own ideas, methods and work-style to the party, and to contribute to the decisions we make, and the actions we take, as a team.
We are very serious when it comes to high performance, continuous improvement and lifelong learning. And we’re on a mission to support you in becoming as awesome at your job as you want to be.
The Time Commitment
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The time commitment is 37.5 hours per week, typically 9.00am til 5.30pm with an hour break. However, we embrace flexible working, so you are free to flex these hours to suit your commitments outside of work.
The only set work times that must be adhered to are to attend our scheduled internal meetings, and any external meetings that you agree with our clients.
We have an offshore team based out in the Philippines to keep in touch with, so there may be some early morning meetings (8am onwards) required to keep the communication lines open!
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If you're a parent to school-age kids, we're happy to make this a 'school hours only' and 'term time only' arrangement on a pro-rated salary. So you'd never be required to work when the kids are at home, and you can focus on being Mum or Dad.
The Location
Our HQ is our own co-working space in the centre of Leeds 2 mins from the train station. Having a space to call our home allows us to communicate and collaborate super-effectively when needed, but we don't expect you to report here every day.
You're free to work from wherever you do your best work, whether that be at home, your favourite cafe, in the pub, or a beachfront tiki bar in Honolulu.
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Most of our clients are based in Yorkshire, so this role would suit someone who is based in that area.
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The only time you’ll be required to be in a specific place in spacetime will be for our quarterly face-to-face meetings with clients (typically taking place in January, April, July and October).
You’ll be on the road occasionally too! Travel to client meetings in places like Manchester & Liverpool will be required as part of the quarterly meeting rounds, as well as day trips to London.
The Boss
Check out Rich’s LinkedIn profile here, and mini-bio on the website here.
Started the business on his mum’s dining room table back in 2017. Spent the last four years diligently designing and building the rocket ship (mostly when he wasn’t in the pub, but also when he was).
Now ready to light the fuse and blast off, as soon as he finds the perfect co-pilot 🚀
The Ask
Come ready to change the world - one small business owner at a time 🤘
ROLE SPECIFICATION.
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Role title: CloudCFO
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Contract type: Full-time employment contract
With a 6-month probationary period / break clause
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Reward: £40,000+ per annum depending on experience and negotiating skills
Paid monthly in arrears, on the 28th of each month
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Work pattern: Work pattern: 37.5 hours per week on a semi-flexible basis (see ‘The Time Commitment’ section above)
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Location: Your primary work location is totally up to you!
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You are free to carry out your responsibilities from any location that is suitable for delivering your role - strong internet connection and access to electricity are the main requirements
Access to a quiet space free from background noise will be needed for video and telephone calls
Face-to-face client meetings will be carried out quarterly basis, most are around the West / North Yorkshire area, with some in Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, London, etc.
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Holidays: 5.6 weeks holiday per year, including all UK public holidays
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Additional benefits: Incentive-based bonus structure to be agreed following completion of a 6-month probationary period.
Home office allowance @ £6 per week
Personalised mug for your home office (own tea & coffee must be provided)
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Dress code: Wear something
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Reporting into: Founder / CEO (UK)
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Other relationships: Client Manager Team (UK), Operations Team (Philippines)
Purpose of this role
As our new CloudCFO you will be responsible for delivering all aspects of the value proposition
that we offer our clients. That can be distilled into these two main areas:
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Being a Virtual FD (‘CloudCFO’) for our clients, helping their businesses to fulfil their potential,
and help them lead the lifestyle of a Rock And Roll Star -
Being the human interface between our clients and the operational systems of our business.
Responsibilities and Outcomes
You will be responsible for:
Helping our clients improve the performance of their business
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Understanding each clients’ vision for their business, and how we will help them to achieve it
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Monitoring each client’s results on a weekly basis, communicating and engaging with them on the performance of their business
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Conduct monthly / quarterly coaching meetings with clients, to help them make decisions that
will improve their business’s results -
Preparing forecasts and 'what-if' analysis to help them quantify the impact that their decisions will have on their business's profit, cashflow and valuation
Helping our clients achieve their personal goals
and ambitions
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Understanding each clients’ personal ambitions in life, and their main motivations
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Documenting their personal wealth targets, and tracking progress towards them
Ensuring our clients are supported and resolve with their questions
and concerns
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Responding to client queries and requests, so they feel supported and at ease
We are delivering high quality work, and Clients’ data in Xero is complete,
accurate, and up to date
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Reviewing the bookkeeping / payroll / accounting work that is completed by the Operations and Payroll Teams each week
New clients are onboarded efficiently, and consistently WOW’d throughout
our first 90 days working with them
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Handling the communication and feedback with new clients throughout their onboarding
Our business achieves its revenue and profitability targets
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Conducting our Discovery Call and Fireside Chat meetings with prospective clients, and clearly articulating the value that we can bring to their business and their life
ABOUT YOU.
Core Skills
To be considered for this role, you must be able to demonstrate these core skills:
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Have the ability to deliver written and verbal communication in a simple, clear, and warm style
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Be able to analyse financial information and reports, and provide insights and ask powerful questions
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Be able to challenge our clients on their assumptions and ways of thinking, in the style of a critical friend.
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Hold clients to account for completing the actions which they’ve committed to
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Show a healthy mixture of heart (because we care about their success) and backbone (because we need to be firm with them)
Values and mindset
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Dare to be different - you’re not afraid to think, speak and act in a way that’s opposite to the status quo, conventional wisdom, and common sense
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Extreme ownership - you’re able to bring energy & positivity to every project and task - and take full ownership especially when things aren’t going as planned, and even when it's not "your fault"
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Growth Mindset - you’re on a mission to be continuously improving & learning new skills, new software / apps, and new ways of working
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Super communicate - you’re able to communicate with our team and with our clients using the right channel, with the right tone, at the right time
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Naturally collaborative - you’re able to partner with others to create awesome results
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Logical brain - you can understand the flow of a process, break it down into steps, and create clear and comprehensive instructions for others to follow
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Build relationships - you’re honest, reliable, friendly and warm with other people
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Agile - you seek feedback early and change course when needed, valuing continuous improvement over delayed perfection
Experience
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Recognised accounting qualification - e.g. ACA, ACCA, CIMA
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Minimum five years of experience working in finance and accountancy
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Preparation and review of management accounts, statutory accounts, VAT returns, Corporation Tax returns, etc
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Experience of a client-management role within an accountancy practice would be an advantage
Career aspirations
You must have ambition and drive to help us create a more awesome business as we move forward.
We’re an early stage business, and we don’t yet have a full suite of sophisticated systems and processes built (but we’re working on it :) If you like to use your initiative and creativity, rather than sticking to what you’ve been asked to do, this is definitely the place for you.
This role offers you the satisfaction of seeing it grow into something bigger and successful in future. There are many ways you can grow with the company as it scales:
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Developing services that will allow us to deliver more awesome results for our clients
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Specialising in specific technical areas to open up new revenue streams, deliver more value to clients, and gain a greater share of the profits we generate
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Introducing new knowledge & skills to our team and delivering the training to embed them across the business
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Getting involved with the business’s sales and marketing activities - through producing written content, video content, and running webinars
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Growing the business by helping us open up new branches in new locations, and overseeing their growth & development
Our non-negotiables
These are the basic ‘hygiene factors’ that we require from you as a member of our team:
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Punctuality - being on time for all of our scheduled meetings
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Connectivity - strong internet connection so that we can take part in video calls
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Environment - you will need a quiet location to work from which is free from background noise when we’re on video calls
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Equipment - USB headphones with microphone, so that you have good audio quality and we can communicate effectively via Zoom
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To apply
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Check out our website for more information on our business
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Register your interest via LinkedIn here (link to follow).
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Thanks for reading!
Rich
